Canyons of the Ancients National Monument – The temperature in Sand Canyon is sweltering above 100, but a depression in the earth under a rusted pipeline is coated in dry ice.
The ice forms around a loudly hissing carbon dioxide leak – the reaction when that chemical decompresses and evaporates. The CO2 has been leaking at this spot for more than a month. Dozens of other leaks have sprung in recent years in the much- patched, 65-year-old pipeline draped for miles across the slick rock and sand of a monument created to protect the ruins of Ancient Puebloans. Last summer, one leak shot the gas 15 feet into the air. It made it look as if snow were falling in a patch of desert heat in a far reach of a canyon that draws 200,000 visitors annually.
CO2 is seen as a major contributor to global warming and can be deadly if inhaled in large amounts.
The leaks are just one of the problems with a World War II-era CO2 operation in a monument with more archaeological treasures than any other in the country, and with more CO2 buried deep under its canyons and mesas than any other place in the world.
A dehydration plant that separates gas from water currently has one valve that spews CO2. The liners in holding ponds have torn from regular pressure-releasing blasts of water and gas. The releases shatter the silence of the monument with a sound like a jet engine.
Bureau of Land Management natural resource officer Bob Salter has been pushing to get the problems of this outdated operation fixed since he signed on two years ago. He was hired to chronicle the condition of leases that give oil-and-gas and CO2 companies and livestock grazers access to more than 80 percent of the 164,000-acre monument.
“Dangerous and dirty”
Salter calls the British Oxygen Corp. CO2 operation the worst environmental degradation he has found. He said the owners – the 111-year-old BOC, which operates wells, oxygen and CO2 companies worldwide, and its new parent company, the German Linde Group – have been slow to make repairs.
Canyons manager LouAnn Jacobson has issued notices of noncompliance to BOC dating back 14 months and followed up with “order” letters spelling out specific actions that need to be taken. But Salter said higher-ups in the BLM have not applied pressure for changes that would bring the operation into the modern era.
“It’s a dangerous and dirty operation. This is 1940s technology that is still in service,” Salter said. “We would never permit this today.”
Duane Spencer, BLM branch manager of fluids for Colorado, agreed some of it would not be approved today. But he noted the BLM is mandated to bring old operations up to newer standards through a series of carefully documented steps so a company is not forced out of business by unmanageable demands.
“Sometimes the field folks can get frustrated. It does take time to bring these old operations into a different era,” he said.
BOC manager Joe Newell said his company is working toward all the repairs, including some not required under federal regulations. Those repairs are taking time, he said, because there is a shortage of qualified contractors to do the work. He said he is trying to meet deadlines that extend until the end of August for a number of repairs.
Old pipe will be tested
Newell said the company already has replaced several sections of pipe, sprayed weeds that have taken over reclaimed well pads, hired a contractor to repair a jarring rutted road, ordered a muffler to dampen the sound, bought paint for the dehydration facility, and made plans to lessen gas releases by taking valves off timers.
He said he is trying to hire a specialized welder to fix the remaining leaks before the BLM’s Friday deadline for that repair.
Later, a pressurized systemwide test is expected to show if the old carbon-steel pipe can still function. When CO2 mixes with water, as it does in the pipe, it creates carbolic acid. Carbolic acid eats away at carbon steel.
The CO2 operation, which produces 200 tons of CO2 a day, has been in the area that is now the Sand Canyon portion of the monument since 1942. That was six years before the BLM was created and well ahead of the controversial Clinton-era creation of the monument in Dolores and Montezuma counties in 2000.
The gas was first tapped when the military needed dry ice to preserve blood and medicines bound for battlefields. Local legend has it that military planes would fly over McElmo Canyon, where the processing plant is located, and drop a rock with an order for specific amounts of ice. Workers would bring the ice out in buckboards to the waiting planes at an airstrip near Cortez.
The colorless, odorless gas now tagged as one of the worst greenhouse-gas offenders is still used to make dry ice. It also puts the fizz in carbonated drinks and helps extend the life of oil and gas wells.
Kinder Morgan CO2 has 53 wells in the monument not far from BOC’s operation and pipes a billion cubic feet of CO2 daily to oil fields in west Texas that were considered depleted before the CO2 was used to loosen gas in deep formations.
Salter said Kinder Morgan and most of the other operators work in harmony with the BLM in an area that is home to dozens of ancient cliff houses and where the ground is littered with pieces of flint and pottery.
One nearly intact ruin, Vision House, sits under an overhang about 500 yards from BOC’s dehydration plant and open holding pit.
The holding pond was cleared of 2,000 barrels of sludge and trash last summer and its liner replaced. But the top layer of that liner in two pits already has been torn by the blast of water and gas when the pressure builds.
Salter said he doesn’t believe anything from the pit is leaking to the cliff dwelling, but he has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to place an air monitor near the site.
Penalties, fines possible
Jacobson, who is Salter’s superior, said she is not as concerned as Salter and that the company has moved to rectify the situation and a field visit to the site with Newell last week helped confirm the company is committed to making changes.
Bob Clayton, production supervisor for Kinder Morgan’s CO2 operations at the monument, said he thinks Salter is doing his job – and doing it well.
“The energy industry needs to operate properly on public lands. To garner public support you need to do it responsibly,” said Clayton, who also serves on the monument advisory board.
Spencer said that by the end of the summer the BOC operation will be better. If it hasn’t improved, he said, BOC could be granted more time or issued new noncompliance orders and $250 assessments. If problems continue, BOC could face civil penalties and fines up to $150,000.
Salter, a 30-year federal lands employee who is working on a contract basis, said he is afraid of losing his job for exposing the mess in the monument and what he called “an entrenched culture of inaction.”
“But I can look at myself in the mirror and know I never sold out the land,” he said.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
